 | | | | |
|
 First we heard all the hype - then it went quiet. But behind the scenes, Job Definition Format is
being successfully implemented by pioneering printing companies across Europe. Mark Rushton visited
one of them, Kraft Druk, near Stuttgart, Germany. |
|
Suddenly real live reports are coming through on the effectiveness of JDF. Here are just some comments from front
line users:'We are saving three hours office work every day','ninety percent of all jobs are passed to our presses without any
further processing being needed'and,'we estimate savings of €200000 a year'. |
|
It is in the offices where the full impact of JDF is being most felt. Thomas Brickwedde, head of internal sales and IT at Kraft Druk, said:
'We already had an efficient workflow strategy, and adding digitisation via JDF in production has helped streamline it even more, but where
we are really finding the benefits of these additions is in exploiting cost cutting opportunities that we previously had no way of measuring. |
|
'Take platemaking for example; it is so easy to have a remake on a particular job, and for it not to be taken account of. in a busy printing
company like ours, nonaccounted for plates can add up to a lot of money at the end of the year. Visibility of such activity has not only allowed
us to account for stock, but also deal with why the problems are occuring. We estimate tha this ability alone has saved us around € 200 000 a
year in plates, ink, and paper stock, as well as in labour cost.' |
The company would qualify as a medium sized printer by UK standards. With a turnover of around € 10 million, its workforce of just over 80 people,
produce varied jobs for the high quality end of the print market, whitch includes weekly and monthly publications, as well as point of sale displays
and multi-language catalogues.
The whole streamlining of the printing process at Kraft Druk starts in the office with Office XP and HIFLEX MIS system running on both Linux and
Windows 2000 servers. The pre-press department has Creo's Prinergy PDF workflow linked up to a fully automatic Lotem 800 Quantum platesetter. |
|
The pressroom, all sheetfed Man Roland 700's, consists of one eight colour, a five and a four colour. All the presses are equipped with Man
Roland's Pecom system which allows JDF interoperability to take place on the machine room floor. The company is not as yet operating JDF in
its finishing department, altrough its next step is to link up its MBO. |
HIFLEX Print is the MIS module that the JDF network at Kraft Druk revolves around. It automatically creates a new job in Prinergy as soon
as an estimate evolves into a live job. Prinergy then returns all the information in subsequent activities. These include updates on
author's corrections, material usage of proofs and plates, as well as cataloguing all times taken for these activities.
HIFLEX Print again cmes into action when the job information is passed on for printing on the Man Roland presses. This is done using Prinergy
which holds the data for the duct settings. HIFLEX uses the JDF interface to create customer details and printing instructions, for example,
sizes, length of run, types of links and number of plates. All events an the machine are also reported back.
Mr Brickwedde summed up his opinions and highlighted the advantages of JDF integration. He said.'The greatest benefit is that allmotivates us
to implement standardised production throughout the company. By networking our entire production from prepress to finisching it forces us to
consider every single workflow phase. Many people still see JDF integration as something technical and miss the point of its true purpose,
namely as an instrument for organising operations more efficiently.' |
|
|
| |
